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Presentation Tips: 10 Mistakes That Will Get You Fired or Ignored

Presentation Tips: 10 Business Presentation Mistakes That Will Get You Fired, Demoted or Ignored

The vast majority of business presentations suck. We know this. Usually we blame bad PowerPoint. This article provides presentation tips on 10 mistakes we should avoid accidentally making.

There’s lots of presentation tips out there meant to help us. But if you work in corporate America, I would suggest you ignore most of it because most ‘business presentation advice’ doesn’t focus on presentations, it focuses on speeches.

I don’t know about your experience, but my boss gets pissed off when I try to give speeches on quarterly financial performance. He gets especially annoyed when I channel JFK, slip into a Bostonian accent and declare that:

We choose to make this investment in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard… – JFK

Ya, that will get you fired.

‘Business presentations’ are not speeches, but they are how we communicate. They are the lingua franca of corporate America. They combine words, images and delivery to communicate our message. And they are hard.

To Do:

Presentation Tip (Mistake) #4: Presenting a topic, rather than answering a question

What Is In It For Them?

The most effective formula to ensuring your audience connects with your material and is engaged with your presentation is to give a presentation about something they care about.

The best way to do this is to answer a question that they have. Rather than presenting about ‘Customer Relationship Management Software’, instead a presentation that answers the question ‘Our CRM software is old, does it need to be replaced?’ will prove to be much more relevant and topical for the audience.

Here are a couple of examples:

Question: ‘Do I have the problem your product solves?’

NOT Topic: ‘This is what our product does’

Question: ‘What is the best plan for accelerating growth?’

NOT Topic: ‘2015 Marketing Plan’

This process will very often result in much greater clarity around what EXACTLY the presentation should focus on.

‘Our CRM software is inefficient and needs to be replaced, how do we go about installing and selecting an alternative?’

The resulting presentations for each of these questions, as you can image, would be very different.

To Do’s:

Always present a ‘topic’ that is the answer to a question that is in the mind of your audience

Plant the question in the mind of the audience before answering it

Presentation Tip (Mistake) #5: Not having an introduction

There are many ways to start a presentation.

The best approach for business presentations is with an introduction that is designed to plant the question you are there to answer into the minds of the audience.

To do this:

Craft an introduction that outlines the background, or context, of the situation. Include all facts that are already known to your audience

Next, present the catalyst that has resulted in your audience having a question. The catalyst is what has changed or happened that has given rise to a question

Then, explicitly or implicitly state the question

Spend the rest of your presentation answering the question.

Use Barbra Minto’s SCQ framework to help you.

To Do’s:

Craft an introduction that lays out the background and catalyst for the presentation

Ensure the introduction ‘tees-up’ the question you are planning on answering

Presentation Tip (Mistake) #6: Failing to structure your argument

Your job is to communicate your answer to your audience’s question.

When the audience cannot follow your logic, or the flow of your argument, they become frustrated. They get pissed off. They stop paying attention to you.

Your audience wants to follow what you are saying; the logic of your argument. But they need your help. Structure is how you signpost where you are going and help your audience internalize what you are saying.

Listen, structure is a good thing. But sometimes it just isn’t easy. Expect half your time to be spent working on structure.

To Do’s:

Adopt common presentation structure blueprints

Focus on structure obsessively

Apply MECE principles (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive)

Limit your lists to no more than 5 items. If you have more, bucket these ideas into a new set of groupings, one level of abstraction higher

Presentation Tip (Mistake) #7: Only asserting; failing to demonstrate

You know what they say about opinions. And everyone has one.

Your credibility skyrockets when you demonstrate the truth of your assertions through data, facts, or very compelling logic. Data is a good thing. Footnotes are a good thing. Use them.

To-Do’s:

Presentation Tip (Mistake) #8: Underestimating or overestimating the role of design

Design is important. It just isn’t everything.

Your objective is not to create a pretty deck. The objective is to communicate your point (your answer to your audience’s question).

Having said this, design matters. The medium is the message. I can’t take you seriously if you can’t be bothered to make your deck look good. Because it really isn’t that hard to meet a minimum standard.

But don’t allow design to get in the way of communicating your point, presenting your data.

Adopt a minimalist design ethos – not because it is inherently superior, but because it strips out the extraneous. It allows us to focus on that which is most important.

To Do’s:

Recognize that many people think visually – Explain concepts and ideas with pictures as well as text

Get yourself a good looking template, that is minimalist in design (Use the SlideHeroes template, its free; or checkout GraphicRiver

Adopt a message driven slide layout: Reserve each slide for a single primary idea; write concise two line headlines that make your main assertion or introduce your primary idea

Don’t use pie charts, crazy animations, 3D, or random special effects. Just don’t.

Create slides that are scannable – Employ the three second rule – people should be able to ‘get’ the slide in 1, 2, 3 seconds

FREE Presentation Template

Presentation Tip (Mistake) #9: Not worrying about your hair

Have I convinced you of the fundamental differences between sit-down business presentations and public speaking? Good.

Now ignore what I said.

Because you better believe business presentations are a performance.

Just not in the same way speeches are. And Performance is certainly NOT where you should start. But once your deck is in place, once your answer to the question is nailed, a focus on your performance in the room can make a huge difference.

To Do’s:

Develop a script

Practice, practice, practice

Be yourself

Communicate with body and voice

Plan for answering questions

Have conviction in the material you are presenting. If you don’t, work harder Demonstrate passion and enthusiasm. If you are not feeling it, drink some coffee. Fake it. If you can’t fake it, have someone else present

Presentation Tip (Mistake) #10: Not having next steps

You need next steps. You need a call to action. The objective of your presentation should be for your audience to DO SOMETHING as a result of you presenting your material.

Examples of possible next steps include:

Try your product

Move to the next stage in your sales funnel

Go away to get the necessary investment to do what you’re recommending

Approve a course of action

Identify what your Next Step is early in your process, make sure it strongly influences your approach to creating your presentation, and make sure the finished product compels your audience to take that step.

To Do’s:

Identify what your desired next step(s) are early on in the development process

Design the presentation so that the next steps are articulated and are the expected, logical consequence of your answer you have presented

Design the presentation so that the next steps are:

Arcticulated

The expected, logical consequence of your answer

Desirable – your audience wants to do them

Conclusion

Sit-down business presentations are hard. And it is very easy to fall into any number of traps and create something that fails to deliver.

But with effort, and focus on the right things, your presentation can become something that will get you noticed, get your point across, and progress your career.